RUSH: There are other things in the news out there and I, ladies and gentlemen, do not want to miss or have anything go by here and not have it commented on, such as yesterday’s earth-shattering news — health-related news — that mothers, pregnant women who eat chicken during their pregnancies, it can affect the size of a male offspring’s penis and in a negative way. Eating chicken can reduce the size.

That’s according to “the latest scientific research,” same kind of science that’s applied to global warming.

There’s all kinds of stuff out there like that, like Ray Lewis — former linebacker of the Baltimore Ravens — is now a commentator and analyst at ESPN. NFL Films every year does a highlight show of the previous season’s Super Bowl, and last year’s Super Bowl was the San Francisco Fort’iners and the Baltimore Ravens. Do you remember early in the third quarter there was a power failure in the Superdome? Most of the lights went out. At the time, the Ravens were way up.

It was like 24-6 or 26-6 or something, and the Ravens had the momentum, and the lights went out. On the NFL show called America’s Game, a special chronicled the Ravens win — which turned out to be, in this case, nip and tuck there. They won 34-31 over the 49ers. Ray Lewis said, “I’m not gonna accuse nobody of nothing — because I don’t know facts. But you’re a zillion-dollar company, and your lights go out? No. No way.

“Now listen, if you grew up like I grew up — and you grew up in a household like I grew up — then sometimes your lights might go out, because times get hard. I understand that. But you cannot tell me somebody wasn’t sitting there and when they say, ‘The Ravens (are) about to blow them out. Man, we better do something.’ … That’s a huge shift in any game, in all seriousness. And as you see how huge it was because it let them right back in the game.”

Ray Lewis thinks the lights were turned off on purpose by the league in the Superdome to bring the 49ers back into it. Either they wanted the 49ers to win or they wanted at least a competitive game for ratings, and Ray Lewis says, “I’m not gonna accuse nobody of nothing — because I don’t know facts. But” he goes on to predict not predict, or offer the opinion that somebody turned out the lights.

“City and stadium officials later attributed the blackout to a faulty electrical delay device…” You know, there was a blackout at Candlestick Park a couple of years ago on a Monday night game with the 49ers and the Pittsburgh Steelers. I think it was the Steelers. Now I don’t know. I think it was. Anyway, the 49ers are involved in a lot of blackout games where the lights go out. So Ray Lewis, he actually thinks this. He stands by this. You know, the league… (snort)

What are they going to do here? This is one of their stars. So they have to take this seriously. So the league’s out there saying, “No, we looked into it. It’s not possible.” But Ray doesn’t believe it. He thinks somebody turned the lights out to stop their momentum. And it did. It caused a delay in the game at 35 minutes or so. There are momentum shifts in National Football League games, in college games, too, and coaches can’t explain it. There’s no way.

Have you ever heard of something happening in a game and the analyst will say, “Now that’s gonna really rip ’em up and now they’re gonna really be motivated.” As a fan, I say, “Oh, you mean they half showed up at game time but they’re not really fully motivated until something happens in the game?” But that’s the way it is. Everybody always has a little more in the tank. Now, there are a relative few greats who start at full throttle, go all the way through at full throttle, and end at full throttle.

You know them if I’d mention the names. You’d know who those people are. Lewis was one of them in his prime. But everybody always has something left in the tank, and these momentum things, these momentum shifts are real. I asked Bum Phillips once. He was no longer coaching Houston Oilers and the Saints. He was in the press box at Three Rivers Stadium, and I don’t know, something had happened. The Steelers and Oilers were playing and something happened.

I asked him, “Coach, why does this happen?”

He looked at me and said, “Son, if I could answer that, I’d still be out there.”

They don’t know. But we do know that turning the lights off in a Super Bowl in a dome will affect the momentum.

Miley Cyrus. “Miley Cyrus?” No, it’s time for a little low information outreach. She has no regrets. She says she made history! She’s weighing in on her own controversy. She says, “I don’t pay attention to the negative because I’ve seen this play out so many times; how many times have we seen this play out in pop music? Madonna’s done it, BritneyÂ’s done it. Anyone that performs, that’s what you’re looking for, you’re wanting to make history.

“Me and Robin [Thicke], the whole time, said, ‘You know weÂ’re about to make history right now?’ They’re over thinking it. You’re thinking about it more than I thought about it when I did it. Like, I didn’t even think about it ’cause that’s just me.” She’s got a point here. Well, she’s learning it at a relatively young age. (summarized) “I don’t pay attention to the negative because I’ve seen how this ends and the negative never carries the day,” and the negative never carried the day on Madonna.

Now, of course, it did in certain places, but it didn’t hurt Madonna’s support from her fans. It didn’t hurt her income. It didn’t hurt her fame. Nothing. Nothing she did harmed her. Everything controversial she did made her bigger, made her more talked about. Isn’t this one of the cultural shifts that so bothers everybody? Because there was a time where if you did something embarrassing, there was shame attached to it. When you had behaved in a way that society agreed was not virtuous, there was a stigma attached.

At some point in our culture, and I don’t know when, that was turned upside down on its head. The more outrageous you are, the more offensive you are, the more risque you are, the more notorious you are, the more in demand you become, the wealthier you get and the more popular you become and the more known you become, the more famous you become. You stop and think about it. The people in pop culture that we would consider to be virtuous?

People sneer at that word, by the way, but you know what I mean. People we consider proper, virtuous, humble, respectful, what are they? They’re nerds. They’re boring, they’re dryballs, and they don’t spark any interest. Five or six years ago, maybe ten years ago now, there was an MTV Music Awards where the F bomb was not used once, and the news the next day in every entertainment story was how boring a show it was.

(interruption) Now, Snerdley says, “Well, she’s not going to be 26 forever.” Yeah? Well, Madonna’s pushing, what, 80 now, and it doesn’t hurt her. Snerdley, there’s been a pop culture shift. It’s not recent. It happened long ago. It used to be that if you did something, you could do something that would harm your career that you would have to pay a price for.

You would have to show remorse and engage in corrective behavior before the public not the media — before the public would once again accept you. Now it’s the exact opposite. The more risque, the more vulgar, the more profane, the more near pornographic you are, the more acclaim you get. She’s exactly right: “I don’t pay attention to the negative.” Meaning, “I don’t care what you critics are saying. Mr. Limbaugh, you call what I did near pornographic. I don’t care. I’ve seen this. I’ve seen how this ends, and I am going to end up bigger than I’ve ever been.”

“Well, he means that when you get to be 35 or 40 or 45 or 50 and you can’t do what you did because nobody’s going to care to look at you at that age, then where are you going to be?”

And her answer: “By then, I’ll be set. I don’t care. I’ll have morphed into something else. If I do my career right, I’ll become something else. I’ll reinvent myself and I’ll be notorious for doing something else. Maybe I’ll go back to being Hannah Montana and I’ll shock everybody and turn clean again.” And she’s got her dad standing right by her side, fully supportive.

That’s another thing that, in the old days if your daughter goes up and does something like that on national TV, you are shamed as a parent. You’re embarrassed. You’re afraid to show up in the barber shop the next day. In this day and age, you show up: “Hey, Billy, my god, your daughter last night on TV, whoa, man, what was that?” And you just smile because everybody’s talking about your daughter. You can frown in there all you want, but I’m telling you I’m not criticizing it. It is what it is. Wardrobe malfunction, Super Bowl.

There’s a new sports website out there. Sports Illustrated gave a guy his own website called Monday Morning Quarterback, and there’s a feature today with the former general manager of the New England Patriots and Kansas City Chiefs, Scott Pioli. And Scott Pioli, who is Bill Parcells’ son in law and sitteth at the right hand of the football god Bill Belichick for all those years, just admitted that he only recently realized that football’s entertainment. To him it’s always been a competitive sport. And as a general manager he couldn’t be concerned or distracted with the entertainment aspect of it.

Now, here’s a guy that’s been in the game for decades and saying today that he only recently realized it’s entertainment. Here is the example he gave. He said (summarizing), “We were in a Super Bowl once in Houston. We played the Carolina Panthers and we got out of there with a three point win.” He said, “There was one of the greatest sports stories ever in that game. We needed a long snapper, and I had to go get a guy who hadn’t played in a long time. He’d retired.” His name was Brian Kinchen, and I forget what it is about this player that is noteworthy, injured or something.

Anyway, they brought him back. It was his play that enabled the winning field goal and so forth. That was the wardrobe malfunction game, and Pioli said, “Nobody remembers a damn thing that happened in that game. It was one of the greatest Super Bowls ever and nobody remembers it. They remember Janet Jackson and Timberlake and the wardrobe malfunction, and that’s when I learned that football is entertainment.” I’m not criticizing what he’s saying. I think it’s fascinating. I’m fascinated by what people say, what they think. Football’s been in the entertainment business I don’t know how long, but he was immersed in it. It was his bis’ness. Judging players, putting together the right roster, make sure they play. There’s nothing entertaining about that. I mean, that is hard blood, sweat and tears. It is cutthroat.

It’s vicious on a football team, in a football game, in the locker. But he had to come to grips with the fact that it’s entertainment. Well, if it’s entertainment now, what does that mean in terms of putting together a roster? What kind of players do you want on your team? It used to be you didn’t want the bad actors. You didn’t want the character mishaps. Maybe now you do. They get your team attention.

If Miley Cyrus became a cheerleader for the Jets this year, how many tickets would she sell? The team isn’t going to sell any. Just kidding. Just kidding.

I’ve got to take a break. Sit tight, my friends. Come back and we’ll start mixing in your phone calls with the sound bites because it’s good. We’ve got McCain up here denying while he’s playing poker, at the Senate hearing yesterday, denying the allegation, the possibility that Bashar Assad was set up on these chemical weapons.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s another example, another example. You know, you look at Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky or Bill Clinton and Gennifer Flowers or Bill Clinton and anybody. There was a time in this country if a president behaved that way, that would be the end of him, but he’s the biggest star in the Democrat Party today. Bigger than Obama, bigger than Hillary, bigger than Anthony Weiner, Clinton is, and because of that. Not because he survived it but because he did it. There is an aspect that he got away with it that makes him a curiosity and how did he do it? He turns Ken Starr into a pervert. Ken Starr may still be a virgin. He turned Ken Starr into a pervert. He and Carville turned Ken Starr into the biggest sex pervert and selling cigarettes to kids and all this stuff.

This is from the Daily Caller: “Bill Clinton Pretending to Be a Vegan So He Can Talk About Being a Vegan — President Bill Clinton has been telling everyone he is a vegan since 2009, but it turns out ClintonÂ’s a liar. The former president, who has been enlisted to sell the nation on Obamacare, told reporters that he was joining his daughter, Chelsea, in an all vegan diet after he had had heart trouble. He was even named PETAÂ’s person of the year in 2010. But in a recent interview with AARP, Clinton said he ate salmon and omelets once a week.”

They even found a chef, a restaurant guy who came forward and said that Clinton eats filet mignon when he comes into his restaurant. He eats meat! Now, it’s not news that Bill Clinton would lie. It’s not news that Bill Clinton would get away with it. It’s not news that he would win an award for lying. It’s like Al Gore getting an award for global warming. Here’s the point: Why does Clinton even bother? Why does Clinton make a big deal out of being a vegan? Why? There’s an answer to this. Do you want to hazard a guess at it? Why does he, why does he do that? No, it’s not a fad. I mean, it is, but that’s not why he does it.

A, it plays with a certain element of the pop culture and makes him hip and young as he’s aging. B, it I’m sure helps getting chicks. That may be number one. I’m not even trying to be funny with that. But it allows him to be trendy. It allows him to be who he’s not. “Oh, yeah, I had that heart trouble and, you know, I’ve become a vegan. I’m a big believer in it. Chelsea and I, we do this.” Secretly he’s eating beef. Yeah, nothing’s real. He’s out there getting credit. But why even go to the trouble? It’s because image, not reality, is everything.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is funny. I’m getting some e-mails from guys saying now they know why life is so painful. Their mothers were vegetarians and they’ve got this big problem and they’re wishing their mothers would have eaten chicken, and then I had some people… (laughing) Honestly, and I’ve got a couple of people, “Why don’t you create an image, Rush?” You know, folks, I’m too lazy to be other than who I am. That, to me, would be really hard to do.

Create an image of somebody I’m not and then do it every day? I couldn’t do it, but that’s what Clinton does. All these guys on the left do it. All these leftist politicians, I mean the ones that are stars do. I couldn’t. I could not do it. I don’t know what the image would be but I wanted a craft and even if I had one… I mean, that’s like saying that I’d rather be somebody that I’m not, and I happen… Folks, as a man you’re not supposed to say this.

I actually do like myself. I don’t have any problems with me. I don’t want to be anybody else. What image would I construct? And then to have to do it every day? (interruption) Yeah, I’d have to remember it? I would have to remember it. Clinton doesn’t have to remember it. He can lie about whatever he wants and it will get covered up, handled or what have you.